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TMCnews Featured Article

February 26, 2013

Infonetics Reports on the Health of the Softswitch Market

By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor

The softswitch market has been struggling since the onset of the recession in 2008. Industry figures show the market continues to struggle in an economy where corporations have eliminated certain technology investments from the budget, making legacy system maintenance a priority as they await the economic recovery.

For 2012, while the results still had a loss of 4 percent, the outcome is still considered far better than feared. Infonetics Research (News - Alert) released its preliminary analysis of the market. An examination of the hosted softswitch and IP softswitch markets suggest a different picture in 2013. Michael Howard (News - Alert), the research firm’s co-founder and principal analyst for carrier networks, shared that the U.S. economy is now in better shape and an increase in worldwide carrier CAPEX is expected this year.

Activity also looks good in the Middle East and Africa. Europe, according to Howard, appears to have hit bottom and a slow climb for the IP router and switch market is expected there, although starting from a lower point. Operators are facing the reality that they need to spend money on their networks or risk losing any type of competitive advantage in the market.

Highlights from the Infonetics report suggest strong results from all major world regions, save for North America, in the fourth quarter of 2012. Revenue in the global IP edge, core router and carrier Ethernet switch areas increased to $3.8 billion, an increase of 12 percent from the previous quarter.

As North America experienced a loss in the fourth quarter of 2012, the region did increase 13 percent compared with the fourth quarter of 2011. This result is the highest year-over-year gain for any region. Core router sales slowed more than edge routers in 2012 as the shift toward 100G is causing carriers to be more cautious as they select their next move to higher-capacity core routers.

Infonetics also analyzed manufacturer placement in the market, recognizing Cisco’s (News - Alert) continued leadership in the #1 spot and Huawei holding fast at #2. Alcatel-Lucent advanced to take over third place, bumping Juniper back to fourth place. Both Huawei (News - Alert) and Alcatel-Lucent boosted their revenue market share thanks to significant gains in the fourth quarter.

REVE Systems is making its own waves in the hosted softswitch and IP softswitch markets. The company’s iTel Switch Plus carrier grade softswitch offers an integrated billing solution and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system. Built to suit the needs of VoIP service providers and wholesale operators, iTel Switch Plus offers multi-level support, an easy-to-use interface, class 4 and 5 softswitch features and more.

The company’s proprietary technology is available for use on a single platform or in a distributed architecture. Plus, it provides scalable and redundant architecture to ensure the softswitch can appeal to the small business or the large IP carrier, with the right infrastructure solutions in place to ensure optimal performance.